Color Coded Cricket

This month’s inaugural Twenty20 International in Australia witnessed an Australian team wearing grey for the first time ever. Last year New Zealand team went retro with beige uniform and mustaches in their first Twenty20 International in Auckland. Personally for me it was exciting to see kiwis back in their 80’s one day outfit and feeling wasn’t much different for vast majority. NZC soon announced that it was just one time thing as they had worked hard enough to establish ‘Black Caps’ brand. Grey uniform of Australians attracted some criticism as well.

Probably these were just experiments considering importance or irrelevance of the occasion. No one should have any doubt any longer that Twenty20 is here to stay even if richest board in the world BCCI is not ready to embrace the concept.

Until colored uniform was adopted world over for one day cricket you couldn’t tell if a game was a test match or an ODI just by watching a short footage on your TV screen. Australians were first and only one to use colored clothing thanks to late Kerry Packer. Indians used it on rare occasions when they hosted a day night match like the third match in Delhi of South Africa’s comeback series in 1991. Re-induction of South Africa into international cricket was a big boost for adoption of colored clothing for pyjama version. They immediately embraced the Australian concept. India soon followed with CAB golden Jubilee tournament (Hero Cup) in 1993. It didn’t took long from there, for colored clothing (for ODIs) to become a norm everywhere in the world.

Today if you see even just a ball being delivered you know if it’s a test or an ODI. This is a welcome change for both traditionalists and generation next. Sanctity of test matches have been maintained with red cherry and gentlemen’s whites, while youthfulness and vibrancy of limited over cricket comes out in full bloom with night cricket and exciting colors.

How about taking this concept to Cricket’s new avatar, Twenty20? I vote for color coded cricket. It would be nice see a separate uniform for this shorter fours-n-sixes cricket. That will not only help in easily identifying what match it must be but will also ensure sanctity of One Day Cricket. Sanctity of pyjama cricket? There should be no doubt as Twenty20 gets more and more popular, 50 overs cricket will offer a much balanced encounter in comparison and many will call it a purer form.

If Twenty20 is a concept expected to attract new crowd and make the sport popular and acceptable in far off places, lets give it its own identity. Let’s call leading designers to come up with an idea that would be unique to this format and jell with its character just like colored clothing did for One Dayers.

A solution to FTP controversy

It seems cricket can never be free of controversies whether at domestic level or global. In recent times we have seen controversies over, among others, selection or non selection of a specific player in India, government’s taking over the administration of board in Zimbabwe, pre series war of words between Australia and South Africa and ICC’s subsequent warning to players. But this latest action of BCCI might just end up shaking cricket world big time.

BCCI wants to get out of FTP (Future Test Program) and schedule its own with other nations. That will complete the circle and take back cricket to where it was before first FTP (ICC’s 10 year test program) was designed in 1999-2000. ICC was little more than a rubber stamp until early and mid nineties but gradually took steps to become FIFA of cricket. Globalization of cricket became its mission statement.

On one side it’s easy to simply criticize BCCI for playing a bully and trying to underplay the importance and role of a world governing body that ICC is. On a closer look there is more to it. In the original ten year plan Ashes remained unchanged. Not only four year cycle remained as it is, even the time during the year series being played wasn’t touched. For both ECB and CA Ashes is top priority for all the revenue they earn from it. Similarly neither England’s nor Australia’s home season was ever disturbed. It never happened in these 5 years that a boxing test wasn’t played at MCG or a Sydney test didn’t start on Jan 2nd. The original World Series cup (presently called VB series) never lost an edition since it’s inception in late seventies. While India for example hosted just 1 ODI in 2004, yes just 1 (they had to split one day and test tours with Australia and South Africa).

I know what’s coming. Boxing Day test at MCG is a tradition faithful will say and so is the summer test at Lord’s. How about boxing day test at Durban? There was a test played at Durban in 1996, each year between 1998-2000, and 2002-2004. Any clue why 1997, 2001 & 2005 are missing? South Africa was playing a Boxing Day test at MCG in these years. In 1995 there was a Boxing Day test in Port Elizabeth but since than Durban has been established for this test. Traditions don’t come out of blue they are being established over the number of years, just as South Africa is attempting to have Kingsmead host a test on Boxing Day every year. So why can’t others have a chance to either continue their traditional seasons or start a brand new one? The primary fault with FTP has been that some nations have enjoyed elite status while others not quite. For couple of nations nothing changed while for some others they sometime only play away series after series killing their home season completely or forced to stretch their home season to months when weather is not very friendly.

Question still exist, does all this allow BCCI to play a bully? Answer is a big NO. BCCI, with their stand, has exposed an anomaly in FTP that was not widely realized. It’s time that a more sensible approach is taken in drafting future plan. This whole controversy can be taken advantage of in dealing with issues of bottom rank test nations such as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. These nations should be given a longer cycle. That will also give opportunity to have more series between top nations just what they seem to be in favor of. It will be mutually beneficial to all parties. One can only wonder how 30 defeats in a year will impact a player psychologically. Playing all the time and keep on loosing is not going to improve standards. Teams like Bangladesh need to have less number of tours but longer tours. They should be playing lots and lots of first class matches with domestic sides apart from tests and one day internationals. They should be encouraged to take a big touring party, say 16 or 17 members so more young players can get chance to judge themselves against quality opposition. You don’t become a world class boxer if your first professional fight is against Mike Tyson at his prime. You’ll be knocked out before you can even think of learning moves from your opponent.

Any cricket fan would like to have more teams at top level but it shouldn’t be rushed. Sri Lanka didn’t tour West Indies until 1997 despite being a test nation since early 1980s. They never played a test when West Indies were undisputed king of cricket like Australia is today. It’s hard to imagine their record would have been any better than Bangladesh’s if FTP was in place at that time. They still became a very competitive test team, didn’t they? Today Sri Lanka has a 5-2 win loss record in their favor against West Indies in tests which could easily be 5-20 had they played them earlier. I don’t even want to try guessing where would have Courtney Walsh ended in number of wickets. Could he be first one to reach 600 test wickets?

It’s time ICC gives fans more of what they want to see, gives more breathing space to new nations with a true opportunity to improve and minimizes mismatches that are not helping the game.

Asian Ashes

In few hours from now the mystery will unfold in Lahore. Third series between Asian rivals in two years promises to be a great statement for test cricket. The biggest question in everybody’s mind is if Saurav Ganguly will be in the playing XI or not. There are also speculations of him playing as an opener. I don’t like to speculate and will rather wait to know what Dravid has in his mind but in my opinion Ganguly’s selection as an opener will send a wrong signal to not only Gambhir and Jaffar but to every aspiring opener in domestic ranks. If Yuvraj merits selection over Ganguly on his current form then he should be in, plain and simple. I am not too convinced of Ganguly’s ability as third seamer. At best he can be restrictive and used to provide some rest for strike bowlers but to win tests you need to attack all the time.

So many experts including past greats are calling this series a battle between Indian batting and Pakistani bowling. I just can’t get the logic. There may be a time in the past when Indian bowling was little beyond Kapil Dev and batting was so much stronger in comparison. Today equations have changed quite a bit. Indian bowling is surely International standard even though not the best in the world. Pakistan is not really much stronger in that department as they are made out to be in the media. This is not the same attack as the one consisting of Imran, Wasim, Waqar & Kadir. Shoaib and Kaneria are very good bowlers but only great bowler playing in this series is Anil Kumble and he is on Indian side. Pakistani batsmen are not for easy ride either.

I really think these two teams are quite balanced and evenly matched considering all factors such as current forms of players and wickets etc. Predicting anything in Cricket is almost foolish and especially when it is mother of all series. At worst this series might turn out to be one with one sided matches but chances are (and I really hope for) we are in for a repeat of English summer of 2005.

Welcome to Asian Ashes!